c4countdown

After a fantastic three months, the ZoomDown heats are done, and we now know the final 8 who will battle it out to see who will become the inaugural ZoomDown Champion!  Let's take a look at our seeds in reverse order

8 - Elliott Mellor

Elliott endured a nail biting end to the series to see if he would hang on to his finals spot, but he's here and he's raring to rematch his prelims adversary, number 1 seed Dan McColm.  Number 8 really doesn't do this lad justice, as those of us who enjoyed his record breaking TV octorun well know! This game promises to be one of the highlights of the quarter finals, and whoever takes it must be a favourite for the series title!

7 - Hazel Drury

Hazel's obscure word knowledge is up there with the best of them, and her numbers aren't too shabby either! Number 2 seed Bradley Horrocks certainly won't be feeling complacent as she brings her formidable talents back to our screens!  Hazel's doing it for the girls - c'mon Hazel!

6 - Big Steve Anderson

Three wins proved to be quite elusive in ZoomDown, but Steve managed to take three of his four closely fought games.  He'll need to be on his toes to take on #3 seed Jonathan Wynn, but with some great spots like JOINTURES and DENARIUS, Jonathan might find he's not easily forgiven for any slip ups!  

5 - Ian Volante

Ian's possibly got the toughest QF match of them all as he faces arguably one of the greatest of all time, #4 seed Conor Travers.  But when Ian brings his best game, you certainly wouldn't want to write him off!  Ian's going to need to play his socks off and then some, but he'll be hoping to give Conor a good run for his money, and his 13 max heat game shows he's capable of doing so!  Good luck Ian - you might need it!

4 - Conor Travers

Conor needs no further introduction, and we've seen just how good he was on 30 BC repeats that have been on our screens recently.  He's had another seven years to practise since then!  He must fancy his chances in his QF draw - he's the only player* to top Ian's 13 maxes with an impressive 14 max game, just missing out on the perfect game by being beaten to the buzzer on a crucial conundrum, which also cost him the #1 seed spot - if seeding was purely on points, Conor would top the table!

3 -Jonathan Wynn

Jonathan started his tetrarun by knocking out Series 80 champion Dinos Syfris, then defeated a further three challengers to become ZoomDown's second tetrachamp.  Jonathan had one or two sticky moments along the way, but his 100% conundrum record stands him in good stead to get him out of trouble if needed. When he's on form he can hold his own with the best of them, and he must be feeling confident going into his QF.

2 - Bradley Horrocks

Bradley had the honour of being the first ZoomDown tetrachamp, and defeated some class opponents to secure his place in the finals. Notably Bradley failed to solve any of his heat conundrums, so Hazel must be hoping to take him to a crucial!  But Bradley's unassuming smile masks a fiercely competitive nature, and I think we're going to see that side of him here!

1 - Cool Dan McColm

Dan arguably had one of the toughest ZoomDown runs, defeating four top class opponents to secure his well deserved #1 spot.  His QF isn't looking to be any easier for him!  Dan was a bit of a dark horse coming into the heats, but absolutely no-one's taking him for granted now - especially not his QF opponent Elliott!  Dan's been spotted lurking on apto - surely checking out the opposition.  If he can pull off a second win against Elliott, he must fancy his chances of going all the way!


A huge thank you from all the ZoomDown team to all our contestants - it's really been a lot of fun, and it's been great to get to know you all a little better.  Tune in Monday and Thursday and support your favourite in the finals!

*Correction - the only finalist. Callum got 14 maxes in the same game, taking the conundrum and victory!

Aw that was great! Nice one Fiona, I shall be borrowing heavily from this for my finals intros

If you're late to ZD, try get caught up by Monday and join us live for what will be truly epic encounters. Dan v Elliott II and the Battle of The Bandanas...was it Chris Butler that suggested PPV? Where would ya get it?

Awesome. Do you have wins/points for them?

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 7:58 am Awesome. Do you have wins/points for them?

Here you go: http://wiki.apterous.org/ZoomDown

Adam Dexter wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 8:43 am

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 7:58 am Awesome. Do you have wins/points for them?

Here you go: http://wiki.apterous.org/ZoomDown

Thanks!

An awesome eightsome. Do you have precise times/dates for the quarter final matches and youtube link, please?

Youtube link is

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWmQM7 ... CxOwZrBgMg

Subscribe to get notified when stuff is happening

Monday 8pm - Dan v Elliott, then Conor v Ian
Thursday 8pm - Brad v Hazel, then Jonathan v Steve

Worth watching live if you can cos half the fun is joining in the live chat

Fiona T wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 5:33 pm Youtube link is

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWmQM7 ... CxOwZrBgMg

Subscribe to get notified when stuff is happening

Monday 8pm - Dan v Elliott, then Conor v Ian
Thursday 8pm - Brad v Hazel, then Jonathan v Steve

Worth watching live if you can cos half the fun is joining in the live chat

Cheers Fiona, I've seen a couple of them not live though. The music volume was a bit offputting but heard that is was now sorted.

Great! Very hard to call.

I'll go with:-
Dan beats Elliott
Hazel beats Bradley
Jonathan beats Steve
Conor beats Ian

Conor beats Dan
Hazel beats Jonathan

Conor beats Hazel.

I'm up to date with Zoomdown, having caught up with most of the recent episodes on the TV version of YouTube a few days after broadcast. But hope to watch the finals live...

Nice predictions LM! Might be worth doing a ZD finals prediction poll thread like there is for Countdown finals.

Awfully excited about tonight's games! Hope to see a large crowd in for these

L'OMG hard luck with your predictions

Meh.
One slip up.
Of all the predictions posted in this thread, these have been the most accurate so far... so there is that!

What’s the song? Two out of Four Ain’t Bad? No that’s not it

Is Saldanha really making an appearance? Wonder what he’s up to now in any case.

Johnny Canuck wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 9:56 pm Is Saldanha really making an appearance? Wonder what he’s up to now in any case.

Paul can be very persuasive Chance to find out!

I enjoyed the sem-finals today!

How does the letter selecting and going up on the screen work? At one point today it became clear that Paul wasn't selecting the letters himself because James Rowen made a mistake (vowel instead of consonant or vice versa) and apologised for it. But then is a third person in charge of the letters on the screen? Because they lag behind and once an M/N was corrected to an N/M so it seems it must be someone else doing it. Paul's voice sometimes gets very quiet when he's announcing letters/numbers (presumably because he's away from the microphone), so you have to wait until it comes up on the screen - because his whiteboard is not visible to us if we're watching the picker choose their letters. Could it be locked onto the shot of Paul while letters/number are going up so we can see the letters/numbers go up live? I don't think it quite works perfectly the way it is.

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Mon Jul 20, 2020 9:17 pm I enjoyed the sem-finals today!

How does the letter selecting and going up on the screen work? At one point today it became clear that Paul wasn't selecting the letters himself because James Rowen made a mistake (vowel instead of consonant or vice versa) and apologised for it. But then is a third person in charge of the letters on the screen? Because they lag behind and once an M/N was corrected to an N/M so it seems it must be someone else doing it. Paul's voice sometimes gets very quiet when he's announcing letters/numbers (presumably because he's away from the microphone), so you have to wait until it comes up on the screen - because his whiteboard is not visible to us if we're watching the picker choose their letters. Could it be locked onto the shot of Paul while letters/number are going up so we can see the letters/numbers go up live? I don't think it quite works perfectly the way it is.

Yep great games tonight - congrats to Conor and Jonathan, and commiserations to Elliott and Bradley - we couldn't have asked for closer games.

To answer your questions -

Letter number picks are done via a practice game on apto - so James was operating apto - set up to pick every round, and Paul reading the letters off the screen (as the other player in the game). The overlays are completely separate and are operated by the person doing the streaming and operating the camera highlights - so Maus today. They have to type the letters in reading off Paul's whiteboard which is why occasional errors occur. The contestants don't see the overlay - they are pinned to Paul so should always have a good view of the whiteboard. I do stuff very slightly differently to Maus (different set up) so see what you think on Thursday - I do tend to pin Paul at some point during the picks just so I can make sure I'm correct.

Not sure if you were following the live chat, but there were a few Q&A about the overlays - I'll post some screenshots to show what I do.

OK - this is my set up

On the left is my laptop screen with the excel overlay
The big screen has zoom on the left, and OBS (the streaming software) on the right
On the right is my old laptop which I use for youtube switch on/off stream/chat/messenger/other browser stuff cos having the browser open as well seems to adversely affect the stream.

To change the camera focus, I click on the thumbnails at the top of the zoom screen. The zoom window fills most of the OBS display. The overlay are set to crop bits of the excel display - which is why you occasionally see wacky stuff if the excel goes wrong. So there's an overlay for score, for letters, for numbers and for conundrum. I've set up shortcut keys so CTRL+SHIFT+L closes conundrum and numbers and displays the letters overlay (for example). I click into the OBS window to switch the overlays cos otherwise strange stuff happens in excel.



This is my current version of the overlays - updated since the other pic. So I type in the letters on the dots on the left and they appear in the main display - so you don't see my cursor / me typing all being well. Ditto with the numbers - but they appear in the reverse order to what I type like on the show/Paul's white board. The conundrum displays what's in the 'conundrum' box, and the scores are below that. I've set up various macros to clear letters and numbers with one click, and also to load the conundrum/answer from the bits below. I think Maus may do it differently and have separate overlays for conundrum and answer, but not sure!



Hopefully that answers most of the questions, and explains why things do sometimes go wrong!

Edit to add that most of the overlay stuff was originally set up by Callum - so credit for the basics of it should go to him!

Thanks for all the information. It looks quite complicated! Obviously it goes without saying that you all do a great job with all of this.

This is excellent.

hahaha i use one laptop with one screen and it all looks shite compared to fiona's, i'll post it though. uh yeah i basically listen to what paul says but sometimes paul is too quiet so i alt-tab into the zoom window and read the letters off the screen, M/N stuff occurs when I just mishear him for whatever reason, no big deal though

Haha, most excellent Fiona! You're ready already, as it were. Yeah, it does help the viewer to see the board as i write them, but there are many factors at play coordinating live play across the internet, so i'm very proud of the job the whole team does in their own unique way.

Those semis were classics.

The Grand Final woohoo

Fiona!
That is so interesting...
Yeah, we all know you are a Countdown Octochamp, but with this you are taking things to another level, and have become a Countdown Octopus. How do you have enough eyes and arms for such multitasking?!

Fair play to you, Thomas, Callum... and anyone else who is able to do all of that, and retain some semblance of sanity, (or at the very least convincingly fake having retained it)!

Observing the live chat from last nights episode I was thinking we should do a 'making of ZoomDown' behind the scenes style episode but I suppose this has covered most of it.

Another most excellent idea Callum

haha looking back at the youtube chat guess spirogyra must have specifically been an 80s school biology thing - Ian, Steve H and I all knew exactly what it is; younger guys never heard of it!

<old person mode>what do they teach them at school these days...</old person mode>

Aye, I was quite surprised at so many blank faces. There's a prog band of that name too who presumably saw the same text books.

Fiona T wrote: ↑Tue Jul 21, 2020 11:09 am spirogyra must have specifically been an 80s school biology thing

In Ireland, that Spirogyra pondweed stuff was on the Leaving Cert Biology course until they updated the syllabus in 2004... so should have been good only for people of around 33 or older...

Great to see, thanks Fiona.

Further congratulations to Conor and Jonathan for a tense and exciting final, and to team Zoomdown for providing something different to occupy us all on a Monday and Thursday evening. Look forward to a second series and other projects.

Psst... am open for a chance at redemption should you need a contestant

Cheers,
Tom

Great final, well done Team Zoomdown Nice to see legend Allan Saldanah make a guest appearance, he's hardly aged since the Supreme Final.

Unfortunately I didn't watch it live, but I've just watched the final now. Really enjoyed it. Well done to Conor, Jonathan and the whole Zoomdown team!

If you missed Conor's pic with his trophy, it's on fb here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/countdo ... 976190569/

Tom S wrote: ↑Thu Jul 23, 2020 8:48 pm Psst... am open for a chance at redemption should you need a contestant

You should have an automatic invitation to Series 2 should you want it.
The conundrum that decided your game should have been discounted, and an alternative one set.

I was going to bump this to say about series 2 being on because that horrific Facebook thing seems to be the communication tool of choice.

Worth subscribing to the youtube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWmQM7 ... CxOwZrBgMg

But yep, back Mondays and Thursdays at 8. Specials TBA.

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Thu Sep 10, 2020 7:43 pm I was going to bump this to say about series 2 being on because that horrific Facebook thing seems to be the communication tool of choice.

But instead I bumped it with a little whinge about one of the only wrong decisions the ZD team ever made!
Coz that's how I roll!

And yes... everyone should subscribe to the YT channel.
It costs nothing, takes literally ONE click, and will DEFINETELY bring benefits to the channel.

Why would anyone deny them that?

Obviously I do my Googling/YouTubing incognito, so it wouldn't inform me. Unless it was on a day where I logged in because I was uploading a video. I might subscribe anyway to get their count up though.

In other news, I'm playing in this on Monday!

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Fri Sep 11, 2020 9:36 pm In other news, I'm playing in this on Monday!

Yeah, I saw that on facebook

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Fri Sep 11, 2020 9:36 pm In other news, I'm playing in this on Monday!

All the best of luck... I'll bring my pom-poms and cheer you on. (This will be a nice dry run for your actual CD appearance )
And there's no need for the word "might". Definitely subscribe to get their count up.
Do it with the 'runners' channel AND the 'philosopher' one ...and with any others you may have tucked away.

How Gevin read what Fiona T wrote: ↑Fri Sep 11, 2020 10:04 pm

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Fri Sep 11, 2020 9:36 pm In other news, I'm playing in this on Monday!

Yeah, I saw that on that horrific Facebook thing